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- Herausgeber: Carcanet Classics
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Winner of the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize 2023 Shortlisted for the National Translation Award in Poetry 2023 by the American Literary Translators Association The Poetry Book Society Spring 2022 Translation Choice Chinese poetry is unique in world literature in that it was written for the best part of 3,000 years by exiles, and Chinese history can be read as a matter of course in the words of poets. In this collection from the Tang Dynasty are poems of war and peace, flight and refuge but above all they are plain-spoken, everyday poems; classics that are everyday timeless, a poetry conceived "to teach the least and the most, the literacy of the heart in a barbarous world," says the translator. C.D. Wright has written of Wong May's work that it is "quirky, unaffectedly well-informed, capacious, and unpredictable in [its] concerns and procedures," qualities which are evident too in every page of her new book, a translation of Du Fu and Li Bai and Wang Wei, and many others whose work is less well known in English. In a vividly picaresque afterword, Wong May dwells on the defining characteristics of these poets, and how they lived and wrote in dark times. This translator's journal is accompanied and prompted by a further marginal voice, who is figured as the rhino: "The Rhino 通天犀 in Tang China held a special place," she writes, "much like the unicorn in medieval Europe ― not as conventional as the phoenix or the dragon but a magical being; an original spirit", a fitting guide to China's murky, tumultuous Middle Ages, that were also its Golden Age of Poetry, and to this truly original book of encounters, whose every turn is illuminating and revelatory.
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In the Same Light
200 Tang Poems for Our Century
translations by Wong May
From the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty
“A fugitive will come to you to report to you the news,
Your mouth will be opened to the fugitive, and you shall speak And be no longer mute.”
— Ezekiel 27
“Is this the time of translation?
The translated poem — the migrant
Living in an alien house.”
— Ali Ahmad Said Esber
“Build fire
and read the future in smoke.”
— W.G. Sebald
“A mountain keeps its echo,
That is how I hold your voice.”
— Rumi
CONTENTS
In the Same Light
~ LIU ZONGYUAN
At Yellow Stream, Hearing an Ape
My path winds along the winding stream.
The stricken ape,
Where is it wailing?
The poor old officer who did a term at the Emperor’s court
Has no more tears to shed.
You are making sad noises in vain.
River Snow
Mountains —
No birds arise
Footpaths —
Run
Out
Of
Footprints
Lone boat —
Straw cloak/
Bamboo hat
Man
Seen
Casting
Cold river snow
Autumn Morning in the Southern Valley, Passing a Deserted Village
Depth of Autumn,
The dew that was
Is now heavy frost.
At dawn I walked South to the hidden valley
Yellow leaves have covered both bridge & creek.
Ancient trees only
Remain
In the village.
Icy blossoms blow about,
Disparate, each to each.
The sound of water is remote but audible.
I have long forgotten what was on my mind
So what was it
That startled the marshland deer?
Early Morning Reading Buddhist Texts with Zhao at his Temple
Water drawn from the well
Chills the teeth —
The mouth opens.
Sit brushing the coat of
Its dust
& dust
Off the coat —
Heart goes quiet.
Out for a random walk
From the East Wing study
Broad-leaf sutra in hand
Hear my own voice
Word for word —
Learning the text
On foot
Forgetting the discourse,
Stumble
Upon the source.
The lost trail to the origin
We all partake of.
If the fables of old
Were anything to go by,
Nature, vanished Nature
May even
Be found back in us?
In the Abbot’s silent courtyard,
The color of moss
Leads one
Deeper into the bamboo grove
Sunrise:
Dew,
Mist, nothing amiss.
The green pines
Look twice-bathed.
Coming off speech
& words
I come to,
Glad of the heart’s gladness.
Passing the Northern Pool by the Creek after Rain at Dawn
Last night’s clouds
Dispersed
On the shoal
Dawn Moon broaches
An obscure village
By the clear pond
A tall tree
Shakes itself
Shakes off the night rain
Troubled by little
Today
Haply a guest
Am I
The tree haply
My host.
Life by the Brookside
Long have I held
My post in the world
Banished
By royal decree
To the South
Wasn’t lucky
I got lucky
A guest of the woodland
In a neighborhood
Of woodsmen
& easeful smallholders
Am glad —
I look like one.
At dawn
Lift the morning dew to
Trim weeds
& night
With the sound of water over stones
In the creek bed
A boat passes,
Pass
The night.
I come & go
Seeing no one
Will sing long
Likely
Of the blue skies of Zhou
Farewell to my Brother
Desolation & gloom. What is left of the soul?
What tears I had not shed
We wept together into the River Yue.
Demoted
Bodily, 6000 li from home & country
Twelve years in the wilderness of Guangxi
— As many times left for dead;
In Guilin
The sickly vapor of the swamp
Dark as splashed ink.
Where you are in the South
— Late Spring
Tell me
The Lake of Dong Ting
Is it every bit a picture
Of the sky?
If you want to know
Where in my dreams I go
Look no further than
The mist on the trees
At the city gate of Jing,
I dream but
to come as close.
~ DU FU
Riverside Village
The clear stream hugs the village as it bends.
Our long summer in the nook.
Swallows on the rafters
Boldly
Come & go.
Wading birds on the water
Befriend each other,
Hold still.
My old wife draws a chess board on a piece of paper.
The youngest son bangs on a bodkin
To make a fish-hook.
Ill, I take what medicine
I can afford.
What more can a man’s
Humble body
Ask for in the world?
Gladness of Rain on a Spring Night
The good rain bides its time
— Naught falls but with Spring
Steals in like a breeze
In the night
Lying soundlessly wet on all things
The good rain
Where the path to the woods
Ran ragged
Clouds at both ends black
With the fisherman’s lights on the river
Like a fire in water
Dawn sees red
The good rain
Weighing in
On the brocade of the royal city
Rightly
Hordes of
The unwashed
Sodden flowers
On the Heights
High wind, sheer sky, stricken cries of gibbons.
The cove clean-clear/ sand, white,
Birds wheel overhead, winging back.
Into the Three Gorges the forest shreds
Itself/ headlong, swishing
Leaves, bough,
The Yangtze rolls on
Gaining in on us.
Autumn finds me on foot again
A wayfarer
In my advanced years
Often ill on the journey,
I climb the terrain this once
On my own.
Hardships
The unendurable endured
All is as frost to the grizzled head.
Newly
Bereft of liquor,
I totter about the heights, falling hard
On an empty jar.
Resigned
Resigned from court!
Setting off each day
With Spring clothes
To the pawnshop,
Drink at the pier-head till drunk,
— Who goes home sober?
Known for wine-debts everywhere
I have been around long enough;
“Rare for a man to reach three score & ten”
Rare old times, chum,
When out of the deep seams of blossoms,
Butterflies
Are seen
With darning needles, &
In keeping with the surface of the water
Dragonflies swim, I mean
Take wing
Go spread the word
We shall do our rounds
Here on earth with
Pleasure
For pleasure,
The while
Blameless.
Spring View
The country has fallen.
Mountains & rivers
Remain.
Spring comes to the city.
The woods deepen.
Grass grows into thickets.
Hard times
Flowers are seen in tears,
Fresh off parting,
A bird’s cry is
Terror to hear.
Beacon fires
Continuous
For three months
“A letter from home is
Worth
Taels of gold”?
I raked my grizzled head,
Hard times
Short on hair
Little there
To hold a hat pin.
(written in captivity — Chang’an, 757)
Visiting the Poet Song Yue’s Abode
With the shivers of autumn
I come to feel your grief.
Gallant scholar,
Rare one,
Gracious
Even as you fall
From grace
My lost guide
Debonair teacher
Across the dynasties
I weep over you & your verse.
The same desolation,
Ill-success the same,
Never mind the other differences.
Your former dwelling by the mountain stream
Still redounds to the cadence of a poet.
Do the clouds & rains of these wild terrains
Visit your dreams?
The Palace of Chu has all but disappeared
— The boatman raised a finger on passing,
Uncertain
Where now. There was.
Two Golden Orioles
Two
Golden orioles sing willows green
Sing willow, willow
Green
One
Row of white cranes go sky blue
To heaven
Heaven,
This
Window frames little,
Famous
Little
Holds West Mountain’s
Timeless
Snow
Bound for the long voyage
East
At my front door
Docked
A boat
Bounding
Bob/ Boat/ bobs
The Lone Goose
The lone goose will not eat, or drink.
Crying out in flight, he’s missing his flock.
Who will know this shred of a bird, errant,
A shadow of its old being,
Passed over by so many,
Himself through the million-fold of clouds?
O what is lost to sight, in endless night
Yet ever alive,
Glad as first seen?
Grief makes one’s ears keen.
Ignorant as hell
Only the ducks make the right noises
Going ceaselessly about their business.
The Temple of the First Minister of Shu
& where would I find the shrine
of the First Minister?
Outside the palace city the sombre cypresses;
The grass in the sun
Is blue-green in spring & splendid.
Well-behind the foliage the goldfinch empties himself
Song after song, heart
& soul, waiting on
No one.
Asked three times to leave your hermitage
& run the world,
You did well
Twice held your peace,
Refused.
You helped found the first empire, assisted in the second.
& died
With the heart of
A loyal old retainer.
The last battle you planned
Your matchless strategies for
Was the only one you did not lead.
Death has its own way of saying
To the fallen, “no need”.
No need,
Which is what, one supposes
Makes
Heroes & warriors
Weep, coming up to the temple
like penitents
To pay their homage.
Not Seeing Li Bai
Not seeing Li Bai
For a time
I begin to fear for him.
My friend
With talent enough to kill,
: Be killed.
It’s as well he was thought
Crazy.
Am I alone in loving that talent
Goddamn talent
One would wish on no man?
The speed with which he knocks out verses,
You will want the poet locked up & dealt with,
& his drinking manner,
The insolence!
Drunk as a lord
Wherever he can make merry.
Friend,
Go to Guan Mountains
With your library
Come back
The day your head is
More white
Than grey.
Dreaming of Li Bai
Parted by death, we choke,
Knock back the sobs.
Parted alive
Lifelong — we breathe
With regrets.
South of the river, miasma rules the swamps.
Not a word since your exile,
In dreams often
You made your visit
Knowing how I miss you.
Your soul,
Late of the living,
Blown in at first light
With the glint of green maples & out —
Off the frontier gate ere the black night
Claims you.
They have netted you in the other world
The forces that be.
On parole,
Where did you get those wings & feathers?
Uncannily bright,
The moon too
Has no place to hide,
Crashing through the rafters
As it leaves the sky —
My absent friend
I begin to dream in your colors.
The waves ahead are steep &
Perilous
We are handing ourselves
Over to dragons,
Friend
Mind the dragons
& other watery monsters.
Thinking of Li Bai from One End of the Sky
A cool wind arises from one end of the sky.
My friend, I cannot vouch for your intent.
Migratory birds arrive & part
Do we hold them to their schedule?
How full of water are the lakes & rivers
In Autumn!
Good writing
Resents happy circumstances.
Good writers are rarely spared.
The demons of this world
Their gargoyle faces
Are made glad
Whenever men of talent hobble.
One ought to have a chat
With poets of the land
Purported to have
Drowned.
The wronged souls
Whether freezing water is their element.
But for the likes of one
We won’t see again,
Fish, fiends & friends
I throw this poem
Into the Miluo River.
